Kiokuryoku
by Fate VII
Summary: Sequel to Yadonushi. Dreaming, praying, keeping a journal, remembering. Wishing to hate every second of it but not quite managing it. Bakura. Ryou. PG-13. Fear.
1. Osore

Fate: And thus Kiokuryoku begins. It's just...vignettes, really. Fading in and out. If you want to see something or know more about someone, request it and I'll write it. Just no lemons, because I'd get them really, really wrong and would look stupid. I know my limits. So. Go forth and be happy! And just because someone appears once doesn't mean they're off-limits forever. This is where this chapter ended. Others could be longer or shorter, depending on where they go.

Disclaimer: Same rules as Yadonushi. Go away. Tired.

* * *

"Tell me a story."

Bakura Ryou blinked at this oddly childish demand. "What kind of story?"

"Any kind of story."

Ryou rolled over and poked his yami, who was sprawled on his back and staring blankly at the ceiling. "Why?"

"I don't want to sleep." Childish again, childish demands, childish reasons.

"Once, there was a girl named Amane," Ryou began hesitatingly. "She wasn't wealthy, or a princess, or anything really special. She was just a pretty little girl with long fluffy hair and big black eyes." He stared at his yami's frozen profile. "And then one day she wasn't even a pretty little girl anymore. She was just an empty body hooked up to a bunch of machines. Amane had gone away, gone to torment someone else by staying with them only a few years." Green eyes slid closed. "And then what was left of her died and burned."

"You tell the oddest stories, yadonushi." The barest, sleepy whisper.

"Huh?" Eyes flickering open again. "Yami..." Soft laughter and a flopping back onto the mattress. "So you're asleep against your better judgment."

[]

come play with me

Eyes shut tight, clenched into a fetal position, fists pushed over eyelids.

new game fun game

"No..." Eyes open, fingers closing over the nightstand. "My knife...god where is it...where..."

come play with me magic prince

"No...please no..." Out of bed now, scrabbling through the drawers. "Where is it? Goddammit, _where?!_"

play with me wedded body and blood in soul and in mind forever

"N-no! Let me...let me go...where...where..." Eyes feverish and blind, frantically seeking liberation.

play with me...

"Wh...where..." Eyes drift closed.

A body falls to the rug, loose-limbed and unconscious, with welts around the ankles and wrists as though bound and chained. Another red mark starts fingering around the neck.

[-]

/He's asking you to say yes! To marry me!/ Giggle. /Come on, say it! Say it out loud!/

Tears of humiliation spill from my eyes as I slowly raise my head, fighting the heavy weight of the collar they slapped on me. Hands chained together, cuffs on my ankles for easy retrieval, and a chain from my collar to her gloved hand.

Body and soul subservient. Bonded together for all eternity.

I stare at her. Smile. "Fuck you." Spit. "There's your fucking answer, bitch. But you don't know a word I'm saying. You don't give a flying fuck!"

Already her father roughly snatches the leash from her hands, pushes her into the care of her mother, and drags me away, hissing in my ear. I snarl and try to pull away, but he grabs my hair and yanks my head back with enough force to nearly break my neck against the gold collar. It's just enough to keep me from breathing, enough to jolt the tears from my eyes again as I gasp for breath. Enough to start me flailing against him. He doesn't care, just manhandles me into a room with ease before he lets up.

He drops me to the floor and simply looks down at me, letting the leash trickle from his fingers and slap the ground next to my feet.

I bite down hard on my lower lip, getting the blood flowing enough to stain my teeth, then flick my hair back and scream, "_What are you doing to me?!"_

He folds his arms and smiles. It's a smile that says simply, 'I'm not doing anything.'

His eyes travel over to a point behind me, and I whirl, keeping hold of my leash. Having it won't free me, but it's an advantage I'm not willing to let go.

She's standing there, smiling down at me. Her eyes are filmy and distant, her hair curls over her shoulders and down to her waist, and she's only dressed in a white slip-thing. And she's _smiling._ A horrible, possessive, mocking smile on a child's face.

I start moving backwards and am kicked forward to sprawl at her feet, my eyes clenched with pain.

She kneels and gently pulls my face up with a finger. Then she brushes my forehead with her lips. My cheekbone where the scar once was. My lips. She licks the blood from my chin and pulls me to my feet, standing with me.

The doors close and I know we have to be alone.

I shove her away hard and fling myself at the door, forcing myself to insubstantiality. _Everything has to go, the collars, the chains, everything, get me out of here, I won't be a whore again..._

She has my leash.

I am forced to halt or suffocate, jerked painfully to a stop.

/Do you want to leave me so much, magic prince?/

I've been a whore once,I snarl, unwilling to face her. A painted, polished little spirit-whore, chained to the throne of a megalomaniac heir to a throne with insanity in its blood. Insanity that I witnessed myself in its beginnings. I murdered and fucked on command, anything to stop the emptiness. Anything to make the hell go by a little faster. Is that what you want from me? Your magic whore of a prince?

She giggles prettily. /Yes./

You're insane,I whisper. You're completely insane.

/Of course I am,/ she replies, drawing closer. /I'm in love with you and we're married and we'll have children and live forever. That doesn't happen to normal people. That doesn't happen to sane people. You pay a price, magic prince./

And she yanks the leash hard, dragging me to her relentlessly. Before I can act, she pushes me onto the bed, fastening my wrists to the shackles that kept me there while she slept. But she never locked me there herself.

Never looked at me like...

Hathor save me, but I would go back to being Darien's slave in a heartbeat to keep her off me.

Get off me! Don't touch me! Let me go! Fucking let me go, bitch! Goddamnit! Seshat, fuck you, _help me!_ You horrible scroll-cruncher, you mocking fucking bitch! Oh please..._let me go!_Racking screams now, fighting the chains, fighting her hands, fighting wildly, maniacally.

Darien had been sane, had laid out the terms for me plainly, had told me evenly what he would do to me. Zane loved me. Aya...loved. She said. Micky didn't know. Didn't care.

None of them...none...

Help me! Goddess, _please!_ I fucking repent! Please, I've _paid_ for my sins! Paid thousands of times over! I fought for my _life_, damn you! Am'mit eat me now! Anything...anything...

/Sssh. Don't fight, magic one,/ she whispers, divesting me of clothing. /Don't worry./

I closed my eyes. Hathor save me,I whimper. Please...

/Don't worry./

Not like any of them. No understanding, no meaning. No submission to stave off the emptiness. No pretending to love what I was. No realization of reality.

I did not exist.

__

No!

[-]

No!Body clenching in on itself protectively. Don't touch me! Don't hurt me! Don't..._let me go! _Oh goddess, let me _go!_ Great Lady who owns me...

Bakura's eyes flew open and lit on the strange, haphazard altar in the corner. He reluctantly uncurled himself from the fetal position he'd been in and crawled to the foot of the statue. "Why did you do this to me?" he whispered. "Why did you do it to me again and again and again? Twice in a row?" He blinked back tears, then screamed, "Nine years of hell! Nine fucking _years_ of _hell!_ And that was just the two crazies! What about the rest, dammit? What about the others? What the hell was it all for? You didn't make me sorry! You just made me scream for mercy over and over and over. I wasn't sorry, I was _dead!_"

Silence.

__

"Answer me!"

Silence.

[-]

Ryou was leafing through the small, spiral-bound book he'd given to his yami after the whole thing with the knives and the judge and everyone talking in some weird language and stuff. Bakura wasn't terribly inclined to talk about it -- odd, since he was as talkative as they came -- but he would, after a fashion, write about it. Granted, he couldn't stay in one language for more than a page and a half, had the worst handwriting in the world, and the grammar was best left unmentioned, but he did well enough for an illiterate fugitive still suffering from culture shock, among other things. So he wrote, the writing sprawling backwards and forwards across the page, skipping from line to line, in a strange, crabbed mix of Japanese and Korean and English and what looked like an attempt at Russian and then some kind of sounded-out variant on what had to be Egyptian. He seemed to drop back into familiar territory when particularly angry, and Ryou could pick out most of the curses with ease.

It made for a fascinating, if sometimes heart-wrenching read, if Ryou could manage to decipher it. The book wasn't one's everyday read, but in light of Bakura's recent bout of worse than usual nightmares and tendency to rove about the house, muttering bitterly about vicious old petty gods and demented blonde tarts, he decided that maybe it was high time he got caught up on what was going on.

__

I hate this. Ryou blinked at the relatively straightforward comment. _I hate it. I hate it all. I want it to fucking die. I want to die. But I'm dead so it doesn't matter. Are you reading this, yadonushi? Do you want to keep going? I told you about Micky. Did you remember? I barely said anything about him. But his family wanted me. His family liked me. Liked what I could do, actually. Fuckers._ Here it lapsed into a string of incomprehensible Egyptian, none of which were easily identified curses.

__

Are you still reading, yadonushi mine? You should be. You really should. Are you going away yet? No? Whatever. I don't care. Micky. Little bastard. Always calling me his thief. His. Like a toy, like a plaything, like the little slave that played with him day and night. The slave hated me. Did you know that? I don't remember if I told you.

Micky had a slave his age, with little dark eyes and a shaved head, who danced attendance on him and all that shit. And he hated me so much he wanted to kill me. I saw it in him when Micky dragged me out and forced me to show off what I could do, tell stories. You think it's not so bad? I thought it was hell. No freedom, no life, just shadows and ownership. I'd take him again over all the others. Maybe not all. But I'd take him again in exchange for the psycho, for the king, for...hell. I hated him, and like an innocent I was happy when he died. Thought the others would be like him. Got lured in by Zane. Aya. Got hit with the others. Perdita did her best and so did you, but it's still there. That unwillingness to trust. That fear. Still there. Can't get it to go away. I'm confused.

Micky's little slave's name was Yioh. Hated me. Tried to kill me once. Stabbed me and stabbed me and stabbed me. I bled and bled all over the floor, and screamed a lot, and the family came in and took Yioh away. They asked him why he did it, and he was in love with Micky. I didn't get it. Didn't understand how anyone could love that brat. But everyone's weird, I learned later on. They took him out behind the house and killed him. He'd been precious to the family. They loved him, doted on him, but I could make them rich. When Micky took me out to play, they waited until he tired, then sent me out to steal things. Yioh couldn't do that. Couldn't.

They didn't know I'd be gone in a year, with Micky dead too. I wonder if they did the same thing to Micky that they did to Yioh. They seemed like heathens anyway. Just left his body to rot. His ba must be still hanging around there, wondering what the fuck just happened.

I wouldn't ever want to go there, if I knew where I'd been. Maybe I should find out so I don't ever go there. But Yioh hated and loved with a crazed burning passion I didn't understand. Not for a long, long time. And then I did understand, after...after a lot had happened to me. After everything. And maybe if I do find where Yioh's ba is, maybe I will go, just to let him take it out on me, now that I know I can't die. I've been to hell and back, and then somewhere worse. Yioh can have it out on me. I won't mind. He's probably really bored and pissed off.

Micky cried when they killed Yioh. Cried for ages and ages, and didn't let me go. Longest I was out of my soul room, then. For a whole moon-thing. He didn't know what to do without Yioh there. It was close to the end, though. Only a little later I killed him.

Yioh would have been really pissed if he knew that. Maybe he did anyway. I never went outside to where they left his body to find out.

It smelled sometimes. And then it didn't smell anymore one day, so maybe it just fell apart all of a sudden and didn't smell. I don't know. You're the one who knows that shit. I slept through those classes. Ha. Makes me sound normal, doesn't it? When you know, tell me. Or not. I don't know if I want to know.

I know that not everyone got a real burial because they didn't have the money for the whole routine, for the priests, but everyone who was anyone got some kind of attempt at preservation. The sand did it, I heard. The sand had magic powers like that. Kept people in shape even when they couldn't have the real deal. And cats.

I want a cat. Can we get a cat? Micky had a dog. I hated that too. It bit me a lot. It never bit Yioh or Micky or the family, only me. They thought cats were horrible bad luck, like witchcraft or something. But then I was witchcraft, so maybe they were just on crack. What's crack anyway? It means they were crazy, yeah?

But the dog didn't even bite Yioh when he stabbed me a million times. It bit me then too. But they didn't kill it. They just killed Yioh. And I killed Micky and then I died, but I was already dead. No one killed the dog. Stupid thing should've been hunting like a normal dog and not kept like a cat should've been. I tried explaining that once and they all looked at me like I was half-cracked, but then again, I was. I looked eight years old and had murdered and looted and witnessed a thousand deaths of people I loved, but I only looked eight, and that's all they thought I was. Like Micky. Like Yioh. But in the end, we all died. Me and Yioh and the brat.

Are you still reading, yadonushi? I'm tired. I hate nightmares. I had a nightmare about the girl. I don't know why I wrote about Micky. Oh fuck it all. I'm going away.

Ryou blinked, then cast the book aside. "Yami!"

"Go 'way."

"Yami..."

"What now?"

"You're not okay."

"Never have been. What's your point?"

"Oh, hell," Ryou muttered, padding out next to the other and dropping to his knees at the other's side. "At it with Her again?"

"Hn."

"Who's winning?"

"Hikari."

"Yeah, yeah, shut up." Ryou sighed and swayed slightly, almost leaning on Bakura but not quite. "I read the book."

"About Yioh?"

"Yeah." Sigh again. Stare at the ground. "I can try and find where it was. Do what you like from there."

"You would?" Bakura blinked at him. "Really?"

Ryou nodded, looking vaguely surprised. "And you want a cat?"

"You would?" Bakura repeated, eyes wide.

Ryou smiled. "Oh, gods," he murmured, reaching out and hugging the sulking Ring spirit. "Cut out the wide-eyed incredulity. Cute, but you know I would do anything always for you."

He could feel Bakura rolling his eyes. "Crazy man."

"Your fault, not mine."

* * *

Fluffy: And there you have it. Please, please, please make requests.

Duel: Yeah, the request thing. And review, too. All at once, even.


	2. Yume

Fate: Huzzah. Here it be.

Disclaimer: Whee!

* * *

**[yume]**

"Did you dream last night?"

Ryou blinked, then looked up from his homework. "Hmm?"

"I _said,_ did you dream last night?" Bakura repeated in a tone of voice that was probably as close as he'd ever come to being patient.

Ryou smiled vaguely. "Yeah...yeah, I did." He scribbled another line of calculations, then glanced back at the darker sprawled half on the couch and half on the floor. "Aren't you uncomfortable?"

"I've had a lot worse," Bakura said meditatively.

"Mmm." Scribble.

"Are you even paying attention to me?"

Quick glance. "Yes, I am." Add another line of calculations.

"Hn." Bakura fumbled for the remote with one hand, then flipped the TV on. "What's that?" he inquired, squinting at the screen from his upside-down position.

Ryou didn't even look up this time. "'S a TV."

Sigh. "You know, I forgot to tell you. In one of my lives, I was the darker half of a vampire. We had lots of wild kinky sex for a couple years, sucked some blood, and then I had to stake him through the heart instead of stabbing him."

"Mmhm. Sounds like something you'd enjoy."

Bakura flung the remote at the TV irritably. "You're not _listening_ to me."

"I am too."

"Yadonushi, I am going to _eat_ your homework if you don't put it down and pay attention to me!"

Ryou rolled his eyes. "What do I say in class then? My yami ate my homework?"

"It's a tempting thought." Slow, mocking grin.

With a martyred sigh, Ryou pushed his homework aside and looked over at Bakura. "What?"

"What did you dream last night?"

"Yami, what – ?"

"What did you dream?"

Closing his eyes and leaning back to rest on the floor, Ryou began, "I dreamed...that I was older. And I was somewhere...somewhere warm. And there was blood on the floor, and all over me, but I wasn't afraid. There was...I think it was a deer? A deer. Its skin, at least. And I was washing it. And the blood from it was all over the place. I didn't know...I didn't know what I was doing. And...I wasn't scared or anything. I was...I wasn't happy. I don't remember if I...if I even _knew_ what being happy was. But...it was nice. I...it was nice."

There was a soft noise from the motionless boy on the other side of the room. "Odd."

"Aren't all dreams?" Ryou asked.

"That wasn't a dream," Bakura said, his voice sounding slightly strained.

"Well, what was it?" Ryou demanded, impatience seeping into his words.

"It happened to me. What you described." Bakura's head rolled towards the other. "I didn't, you know."

"Didn't what?" Ryou inquired.

"Know what happiness was. I knew, once, but I didn't remember. I remembered all sorts of things...everything but just being at peace with my surroundings. I suppose by your modern terms, I _was_ happy a lot of the time, but...I'm not modern."

"I'm no more modern than you are," Ryou said quietly. "I'm...half here, half there, I suppose."

"You're with me." Bakura smiled at the ceiling, trying for normalcy and missing by a bit. "You're somewhere in between."

"Do you think we can ever get out?" Ryou asked.

"That would really depend on whether we wanted to."

[-]

"Yami." Poke. "Wake up."

"MrrrghIdunwannaa."

Poke. "Yami. Wake up."

"Whathefuh?"

"It's getting dark, you tit. And I have something for you."

"Mrr."

"Ya-_mi..."_ Cue the puppy dog eyes, the slight whine, and general aura of cuteness.

Bakura thrashed about for a bit, then finally rolled over and sat up, pushing his hair out of his eyes and glowering at Ryou. "What the _hell_ was so _goddamn_ important that you just _had_ to wake me _up?"_

Ryou raised his eyebrows, then very solemnly put a kitten down on the bed. "I was considering just putting her on your head and letting you find out for yourself, but I didn't want you to stab her or something."

"What the – where the _hell_ did you get a cat?" Bakura demanded, his glower melting into an astonished stare.

"Animal shelter," Ryou said with a shrug. He dropped his backpack on the floor and quietly moved the kitten over so he could sit next to the bewildered shade. "They're places where people give away animals they don't want, so you can go and adopt them and stuff. Oof!" he added when Bakura grabbed him hard around the chest and yanked him back in a halfway decent simulation of a hug. "Ow."

"What's her name?" Bakura asked, his breath hot on the back of Ryou's neck.

"Bit of a strange story, actually. They said her name was Bastet," Ryou relegated. "Meep!" he added when Bakura hugged him harder.

"You've been pestering me about my dreams lately," Bakura said quietly. "About why I sleep so much, and so badly."

"I wouldn't say pestering," Ryou retorted, offering one hand to the silvery-white kitten with big gold eyes.

"Mmmph. You don't say. But I'll tell you," Bakura said after a pause. "I'll tell you what I dream, and what your dreams are all about."

Ryou twisted to get a better look at Bakura. "You mean it?"

"Why would I offer if I didn't?" Bakura asked practically.

"When will you tell me?" Ryou asked hesitantly.

"Right now."

[-]

Zane walked back in the door, a dead animal slung over his shoulder. /I'm back!/

What _is_ that thing?I demanded, stabbing one finger at the deer.

/It's an antelope. I'm going to skin it,/ Zane explained. /Snog you later, I have to gut this thing before it starts to smell./

I jumped to my feet and followed him out the door, jewelry rattling with every step. He always dressed me up, you see. Not because I was his toy, but just because he could. Having a rich wife would have made him powerful, but having a lover with the power to summon demons, murder men with a touch, and steal without a trace made him wealthy as well.

He never asked me to do any of these things, and wouldn't let anyone else order me around.

I liked it, I think.

So what exactly are you doing?I inquired as he flicked one knife out of his vest and began cutting a long slice up the animal's stomach.

/Skinning it,/ Zane replied patiently. /I take off the skin, clean it, and tan it. I cut out the intestines and meat, save what I can, and bury the rest. I keep the bones. You've seen the other bones in there,/ he added with a jerk of his head towards the house. /Don't tell me you've never actually wondered where all this meat came from./

I learned not to ask too many questions like that,I replied grimly.

Zane raised his eyebrows. /I see./

I wasn't too sure that he did.

/This is going to take a while. You sure you want to stick around? It gets messy,/ Zane added.

I looked at the animal. Thought about it. I'll stay.

/All right then,/ Zane said doubtfully.

What, you think I'm squeamish?I demanded indignantly.

/Erm. Yes./

I sulked momentarily, then reached around him and knifed out some of the meat. I'm hungry,I said plaintively when he stared at me.

/And you're just going to _eat_ it like that?/

I blinked and bit some off. That was the general idea, yes.

/People catch death-sickness if they don't cook meat first,/ Zane said, sounding worried.

I laughed. I've been dead for longer than your whole family has been alive. I'll be fine.

Zane seemed to be mulling this over as he peeled the skin back and began heaping pieces of gut onto a wooden board. /Want to keep an eye on this, then? If any animals come over and try and eat it, chase them off./

What am I, a guard dog? Mnn-_meef!_

Zane smiled down at me, fingers still held loosely around my face. /Now look what you made me do. You're all over blood./

I touched my shoulders, then felt up my neck to my face. I've had worse,I replied, looking at my fingers.

/Weren't you watching the entrails?/ Zane inquired mildly.

Hey, hey, what about – ?

/Later, you little devil./

[-]

"He had me wash the skin, you see," Bakura said drowsily. "That's your dream."

"What about your dreams, yami?" Ryou asked. It made for an odd picture, the pair of them partially entwined with Bastet draped across Bakura's shoulder.

"Always about him, lately. Not her," Bakura replied tiredly. "Always something different to start with, but the ending is the same. I kill him."

"Yami..."

"I'm never going to forget the way he looked, you see." Sigh. "I explained about Micky, but he didn't believe me. I tried...and he didn't believe. He never believed half of what I said."

"Couldn't he tell when you lied?" Ryou asked, astonished.

"You can?" Bakura retorted.

"For seven years running, and that was another one."

Bakura laughed again, soft and dark and mocking and delicious. "Aren't you going to elbow me aside and go do your homework?"

"No school tomorrow."

"Yes, you have," Bakura replied, perplexity etching itself across his face.

"...Yami, you've been asleep for three days until now. I almost gave up trying to wake you up, but since I'd just gotten Bastet I figured it was worth a shot."

Blink. Blink. Bakura grabbed Ryou's elbow and wrenched the other around so that they were face to face. "Really?"

"Yes."

"It only felt like a few hours," Bakura replied, looking dazed.

"Well, it wasn't."

"So you're not going to move?" Bakura asked.

"I wasn't planning on it, no."

"Good."

Ryou glanced at his yami. "Eh?"

"I'm damn comfortable and you owe me for waking me up."

Ryou laughed, and kept laughing at the crazily normal scene the three of them made, two identical opposites and a silver-white kitten, tangled-up and half-asleep on a twin bed. "Everything seems so...not so otherworldly," he finally said between bouts of laughter.

"That's because everything is just that," Bakura replied enigmatically.

"What do you mean?"

Soft laughter. "I don't know. Oh, shut up, stop moving around, and go to sleep, yadonushi."

Laughter like sin and night air and velvet.

No wonder everyone coveted him.

[-]

_Is it another nightmare?_

_No! I'm not dreaming! Dammit, listen to me!_

_Go back to sleep..._

_I'm _not dreaming!_ You're going to _die!

_Sssh. I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere._

_No! Gods, no! You don't understand! You – _

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Blood on the bed, blood on his hands, blood on his face. Blood on glassy unseeing eyes, blood across a betrayed countenance. Blood everywhere.

_If you taste anything dead without cooking it first, you catch death-sickness and die..._

_Don't eat anything raw._

_I'm dead._

_Dead._

_I'm dead and you killed me._

_Is it another nightmare?_

Bakura screamed.

[-]

"Did you dream again?"

"I dream every night."

"I know." Perdita smiled, the fire painting her face red-gold. "But you'll never tell me what they are, will you?"

"Mmm." Egypt again, hotcold and sandy, the Nile bitter in the back of my mouth and jackal-cries in my ears. Kemet. Home.

So close, so far.

So empty.

"Did you dream after you killed everyone?"

I blinked and looked over. Perdita was lying by the fire, staring up at the sky. "What? Which time?"

She laughed. "Only you would ever ask _which time_ when I used 'you killed everyone' as a reference. The time you burned everything to rubble and then vanished."

"Oh. _That_ time." I stared into the fire, holding one hand out to the flames tentatively. "I dreamed...I dreamed of fire and night, of eternity and green eyes. Of Kemet. Of you, of that _girl,_ of everyone. I dreamed of music and dancing girls, and fighters and blood. I dreamed of dying over and over again, seven times."

"I'm only the sixth," Perdita said softly. "You know that, and I know that."

"Yes."

"How did the others die?"

Stare into the fire. "I never told you?"

"No, you didn't." Perdita rolled over and propped her head on her hands, her hair cascading down her back and across her tattered shirt. "But I think I know."

"Do you?" Numb and fire-blind by now.

"I think you killed them," Perdita said meditatively. "I think you killed them all, because they weren't real. I think...their blood is on your hands."

"Do you think I'll kill you, too?" I asked.

Perdita tilted her head back and smiled. "I wouldn't mind."

_...but she is Home, in the magic sand, where death is only the Beginning and never the End..._

"...tell me, Bakura." Pause. Breath. "What do you plan to find here?"

"Kuru Eruna." Soft, shaky words. "Kuru...Eruna."

"Do you know anything about my family?" Perdita asked, switching topics abruptly.

"No," I replied, puzzled.

"I was born somewhere hot, where it floods but doesn't rain," Perdita said softly. "I don't remember the name. We had to leave, you see. And run and run and run. And there were two children only, my brother and me. He was older, much older. And one day my family came across a caravan of slave traders. I was young and beautiful. I would make a good slave, one that cost money. I could put food in my brother's mouth and pay for my mother's medicines. She was sick, and no one would buy her. But they would buy me, and buy my father if it came to the worst. It mattered that my brother survived, and only him."

"I've heard about crazy people like that." Tracing patterns in the ice-cold sand, the fire flickering heat onto one side of my body.

"I killed him."

"What?"

"I killed him, so my father wouldn't sell himself and my mother would stop whoring. I killed him so I wouldn't have to be sold. I killed my brother." She smiled through the fire. "He held a knife to his chest and told me to push, and push hard. And he told me I wouldn't be alone. Someone would find me. And if I pushed hard enough and bit down on my own pain, I would survive. We would all survive." She closed her eyes. "My mother died, and my father sold me. A murdering brat, I was. No one would take me but my master, and he sent me out to die."

"He sent you for my Ring," I said, astonished.

"Of course." Perdita smiled again, painfully, but the smile was there. "I believed him, you know."

"Your master?"

"My brother. He said someone would find me." She looked directly at Bakura. "I think he meant you."

"Wh-what are you – ?"

"I would have to die to atone for him," Perdita said thoughtfully. "And in doing so I would further someone else's life. Yours."

"But I'm already dead."

"Only as long as you think you are," Perdita said gravely.

Jackals screamed in the distance, screaming triumphantly over their find.

[-]

_He killed everyone and you welcome him?_

_He killed me and you adore him like your own body?_

_I died because of you?_

_You took my prize from me..._

_I hate you!_

_I died to save him...to save you..._

But I didn't...I didn't want this...I didn't mean...

_You didn't?_

_How could you not want him?_

_How do you not love him then? Tell me how._

_How didn't you want this?_

_How didn't you mean to take him from me?_

_Tell me how you didn't._

Not me...not him...not me...not _me!_

_You lived and I died._

_He loved me and killed me, and you're still alive. Don't you wonder? Don't you watch the clock at night and feel a little afraid?_

_Do you ever wonder why it was you and not me?_

_Don't you think he'll turn on you if you don't control him? I failed. You never tried._

_How can you not love him? How do you say you don't adore him? How can you _be_ him? How can you?_

_Have you ever thought about us being as alive as you are?_

I thought about you. I had nightmares! Nightmares like this one!

_I'm not a dream..._

_It was brief, but it was no dream._

_I'm _not_ a dream! I'm _not_ dead!_

_I won't let myself be forgotten. Especially not by you!_

_I'm not a nightmare. I promise..._

_You have nightmares too, then?_

I think about you...I _am_ you. Don't you see? I _am_ you, all of you...

_You're not me._

_He doesn't love you like me._

_Can you rule like me?_

_You don't have the power to be me._

_I am myself and no one else but him._

_You're me? Are you sure?_

Stop it! _Stop it!_ Just get out of my head! _Get out of my head!_

Slow, aching tears slid along Ryou's face.

_Get out of my head..._

_I can't get out of your head. I am you am me am him._

_I am you._

[-]

Bakura blinked at the notebook left where Ryou would have slept, if he still did such a thing. The lighter one was given to roaming about the house endlessly through the night, staving off sleep by sheer force of will.

_They speak to me, yami. Tell them to go away._

One line, one simple little scrawl beneath his latest entry. Bakura left the notebook with the cat and padded from the room, looking for the other without even bothering to glance at his surroundings.

"You're useless if you don't sleep," he observed quietly.

Ryou's hands were shaking as he turned the TV off. "I'll die if I do."

"They haunt your dreams?"

Shudder. "Always."

"They can't have you. Stop shaking." Bakura flopped down next to the other and touched his shoulder, fingers wandering over to his collarbone and neck. "They _can't have you._ I suffered and schemed and died to find you, and died and died and died to keep you. They can't have you."

"I'm so tired..." Whisper.

One hand slowly brushing through white hair, one hand closing green-black eyes. "They'll not have you." Strange, reminiscent smile. "They _can't_ have you. You're _mine._"

"Forever?" Almost noiseless, a breath in the shape of a word.

"I don't know how to say beyond that."

Soft, sleepy laughter. "To infinity and beyond, yami."

Shades and light and shadows. Raise one hand and turn out the light.

Sleep without dreams.

* * *

Fluffy: As you may have noticed, **Kiokuryoku** is a slightly lighter tale than **Yadonushi.** Lack of impending doom will do that.

**Bakuras-Hell:** It goes for seven chapters. So, uh, keep asking if you've got questions.

**Liviania:** snicker Nice image. ;;

**Panda X. Bear:** Dun wanna overdo the book. D'you like Bastet?

**YamiKatie:** blush

**Kyoko-san:** I blame it on Bakura's influence.

**Dreamingchild:** Okies then!

**Saturn Imp:** Hee. Too much angst makes me really snap and start putting in random bits of humour. 

**QueenOfGames:** Hmm. Me likes your idea. Oh, and sorry – Kiokuryoku means 'telling a story' or thereabouts, and 'Yadonushi' is what Bakura calls Ryou. I've heard a variety of translations, from king's home to parasitic host. All of them seem to apply. The translation _I_ have is along the lines of innkeeper or landlord. Sorry again!

**Higashikaze:** I wanted to have this conversation with Perdita happen in her chapter, but I set myself up with a nasty trend and didn't leave myself any room to do it. I am _severely_ tempted to go back and really work over **Yadonushi**. Reeeeeally tempted.

**SweetMisery:** I liketh your idea too.

**tamashiipurizuma:** Don't worry about it. Sorry for the wait!

**Kerei Kitsune:** _Going?_ XD

**viva rose:**Indeed there is!

**Sailor Comet:** You too? Nifty.

**TaleneIsMyYami:** She was the one I had the least planning on, and she turned out hellishly creepy. Damn my imagination. Of course, she wound up being the way I'd sort of planned Aya to be, but changed. Arr.

Duel: ....wow. Erm. Wow. Please pull this off again?


	3. Daisuki

Fate: [is pissed off] I hate this dorm sometimes. Fucking spending twenty minutes deciding which love movie to watch. After which point the Internet shuts off. [foams at mouth] At least this chapter gets all snuggly. Aya and Darien snuggly, that is. Muahahaha.

Disclaimer: ....[runs like hell]

* * *

**[daisuki]**

"Do you love me?"

Ryou Bakura choked on his coffee, then yelped as the scalding liquid burned his throat. "Owww! _Yami!_"

"Is that a no?" Bakura asked.

Ryou decided that putting the coffee aside might be a good idea. "Wh-what kind of question is that? No good morning, no how are you, no I haven't seen you in two days because I've been sulking in my soul room, just...just _that?"_

Bakura hopped up to sit cross-legged on the table. "I haven't been sulking. I've been thinking. There's a difference."

"Not with you," Ryou muttered, and warily took a sip of coffee.

"So do you love me?"

"Gack!" Ryou squeaked, struggling once more with the hot liquid. "You're doing this to me on _purpose_!"

"No I'm not." Bakura attempted to look innocent. This didn't...really...work. "I swear on my mother's grave."

"....your mother was incinerated and turned into a hunk of gold jewellery."

"Your point is...?"

"You suck at being innocent," Ryou said flatly, and went back to his coffee.

Bakura stared at him with deep interest and a very odd smile on his face.

Ryou blinked and looked up after a long moment. "What?"

"Do you love..." Ryou yet again nearly inhaled his morning caffeine dose. "..._mornings_?"

"Yamiiiii! Stop _doing_ that!"

"It's a harmless enough question," Bakura said idly, examining his nails. "Yadonushi, where's my nail polish?"

"I'll get it for you if you stop asking me..._that._"

"I'll get it myself if you answer me," Bakura retorted.

Ryou rolled his eyes. "Fine. I hate mornings. Get me some more coffee on your way to find the nail polish."

Glare. "What's so great about coffee anyway? And you _didn't_ answer my question." Bakura scooted forwards and put one hand under Ryou's chin. "Do. You. Love. Me?"

"Why are you asking?" Ryou inquired softly. "You've never asked before. Do you even...do you even know what you're asking me?"

Bakura flinched slightly. "No, I don't. That's...that's why I'm asking."

Ryou gave this some thought. "I love you so much I don't even know where to start explaining it," he said with a sigh. "It hurts, sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes I just want to die because I'm not sure that anything living can feel like that. And I want you through it, all the time. I want everything about you to coincide with everything about me. Forever."

"...and what about the coffee?"

Ryou burst out laughing and proffered the mostly empty cup. "Here. Try it."

Bakura solemnly took the cup away from Ryou, put it on the counter behind the table, then scooted forwards again and kissed Ryou. "I like my way better," he said against the other boy's lips.

"Yami...?"

"If what you're describing is love, then...then...then I love you," Bakura said in a rush, the words tumbling out as his hair fell down over his eyes. "Isn't this what...what people do? When they...when they mean it?"

Ryou grabbed Bakura's hands, lacing their fingers together. "It's...it's a start," he said hesitantly.

Bakura kissed him again, soft and cautious and sweet and dark. "I think I love..._coffee_," he said, his breath stirring Ryou's bangs.

Ryou disentangled one hand and took another sip from the coffee mug. "Then you should try drinking it like a normal person."

Bakura stubbornly recaptured Ryou's fingers. "I'm not normal. And I _still_ like my way better." He grinned, his lips inches from Ryou's mouth. "Don't you?"

"Ye – mmm..."

[-]

"Tell me what being in love with a person is like."

"Eh?"

"I want to know what being in love with a person is like," Aya said impatiently.

"Why are you asking _me?"_

"Well, haven't you ever been in love?" Aya asked.

I thought about it. Zane...had I ever been _in_ love? Gratitude, lust, desire, anger, confusion. He never believed me, but paid attention to me and was nice to me continually.

"I don't know," I said with a shrug. "What do you think love is?"

"I don't know either," Aya retorted. "Why else would I ask you?"

"I've...my family died," I said ineffectually.

"Not _that_ kind of love," Aya told me impatiently. "The _other_ kind."

"I had a lover," I began. "For two years. Then he...then he died too," I finished.

"And do you miss him?" Aya wanted to know.

Did I _miss_ Zane?

I.,.didn't think that I did.

Zane was wonderful and nice to me and petted my hair and gave me pretty things, but...

But _I_ could give myself pretty things, _I_ took care of myself. _I_ didn't have to rely on anyone for anything, and never had. So why, all of a sudden, should I have made myself so dependent on Zane?

I didn't know.

It had felt strange and alien and nice for a while, and then suddenly maybe not so nice now that I thought about it.

"I...don't think so," I said quietly.

Aya snorted. "Some lover. What, weren't they any good, pet?"

"_Aya!"_ I glared at her. "And _don't_ call me that!"

"Mmm. Sure, pet." Aya pulled a section of her hair over her shoulder and started idly braiding it. "So what do you think it's like to be in love with someone?"

"Why do you want to know so much?" I poked the fire we'd built with my hands, relishing the strange not-pain sensation I got.

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"Not much hurts." I shrugged. "Why do you want to know?"

"I'll never be in love with a person," Aya said confidently. "I'm going to be a queen. I'm going to rule. I'm not going to have time to fall in love with someone. And I'm curious about what I'll be missing."

"Won't knowing what it is make you want to have it more?" I demanded.

She raised her eyebrows. "Don't you want to know what something is, even when everything tells you that you can't have it? Don't you ever wonder about something you'll never see? Do you want to know what lots of water looks like all together and clean? You'll never see it, not out here. But don't you want to know anyway?"

"I can see your point...maybe," I added, hesitating. "I...I don't know if I ever will, either. I'm not even alive any longer. So it's kind of all a moot point, in a way."

"I will be in love," Aya said suddenly.

"I thought you said you wouldn't be," I replied, confused.

"I won't ever be in love with a person," Aya clarified. "But I will be in love...with _myself_. With what I am, with my power, with my abilities. With my resources. I will love it with a blinding burning passion and I'll never want to be apart from it."

"I see," I said meditatively. "So you'll never think of another human being like that?"

Aya looked startled. "When will I have the time? Or, moreover, how will I spare the energy?"

I laughed. "I expected no less, Aya."

"I know, pet."

For once, I didn't protest.

[-]

_You're probably wondering why I asked you, aren't you? You're curious like that. I should know. But you're wondering, aren't you? Wondering why I've been off in my own world lately, wondering why I'm still not all here. Wondering. You do that a lot. _

_You're so curious._

_When I started thinking about Zane, that made me think about Aya, and that made me think about what she did. She said she loved me, and she kissed me, and she died. And she'd promised never to love a human being, or anything but her instruments and tools. I was her tool. I was her pet. And so she loved me._

_Right? Right. Are you following this? Too bad if you're not._

_And that's why I asked._

_Aya never touched me, or anyone. She'd never kissed a man or woman before me, she had no feelings of romance in what could very loosely be called a heart, she'd never...she was a fucking ice queen, all magic and royalty and evil and sadism. _

_I told you she seemed the most human, yeah? Perdita was so much like _me,_ but I never thought of myself as..._ Here the writing fell off into a mess of scribbles and scratched out phrases. _Well hell. Fucking blob. Gonna eat us all. Whatever. But Aya was...she reminded me of what I was like when I was alive, but I'd never really been alive, you know? I was dead-alive. But she wasn't a zombie. It was just that she was so alive that she couldn't be. She was all like...she was like me. Breaking barriers with a death wish. She'd do whatever she wanted all-out until it killed her, and she'd love every second, and there was no room for being quite normal or quite alive or quite human in there, but she made sense to me._

_You make sense to me._

_You..._ And here it trailed into a scrawled jumble of sounded-out Kemetic.

"Yami!" Ryou yelled, keeping one finger on the page.

"I'm _busy!"_

"Doing _what?"_

"They're showing the serial shit on TV! You know, with all the crazy people who do stuff and get away with it!"

"Oh. 'Kay." Ryou sighed and kept reading where it picked up again in a recognisable language. Which happened to be very ungrammatical Korean. "Yami!"

"What _now?"_

"Your grammar sucks."

"I care?"

Ryou closed the book, still holding the page, and thunked himself lightly on the forehead with it before continuing with his read. _I don't understand most people. I don't get them. I don't. Their faces are hard to understand and I don't know what they say. It's crazy. Why do I even fucking understand _you_ of all people? Why _are_ you bonded to me, anyway? What makes _you_ so special?_

_Well, I'm fucked if I know. Bastet, get off. Basteeeee_scribble.

Ryou paused for a long minute.

"I'm not special," he said softly, keeping the page bookmarked with a finger and padding out to the living room.

Bakura was sprawled on the couch face up, one hand over his eyes.

"They start doing autopsies?" Ryou asked, shutting the TV off.

"Mmmph." Bakura hit the back of the couch with one fist, then went back to covering his eyes. "Stupid fucking heathens. They should be cutting up the other people."

"Didn't you do worse?" Ryou teased.

"He deserved it," Bakura said sulkily. "Turn the light off."

"Yami, it's nearly midnight, and I need you to look at something," Ryou protested.

Bakura sat up, sighing. "All right, fine," he said, wincing as his eyes fluttered open. "What is it?"

"What's this say?" Ryou asked, pointing to the incomprehensible scrawl in the middle of the passage.

Bakura stared at it for a long moment, so absorbed that he didn't even notice when Bastet climbed up the back of the couch and draped herself in his hair. "You...you make so much sense to me that it hurts with a blinding burning passion that I never want to be apart from and it hurts so much that I always want to cry and it hurts so much that I want to die but I'm already dead and since nothing living is like this then I don't know what's going on." Closing the book, he reached up and extracted Bastet quietly, staring at her. "Where did you come from?"

"She's been there for about five minutes," Ryou said dryly. "Was that a quote? It sounded like it."

"Aya...Aya said some of that, once. She was trying to describe her power lust," Bakura said hesitatingly, putting one hand over his eyes again. "Can you turn the light off now?"

"Sure." Ryou took the book, tossed it onto the floor with the DVDs, and shut the light off. "You have a headache or something?"

"I don't know." Bakura shrugged, looking somewhat miserable.

Ryou touched Bakura's temples. "You've got a fever at least."

"I'm not sick," Bakura retorted defensively.

"I don't think you are," Ryou agreed. "I'd know. But you're burning to the touch. All over," he amended, fingers trailing down the other's face and along his neck. "What does it feel like to you?"

"Like I'm on fire," Bakura complained. "That hurts like a bitch, let me tell you."

"You've been on fire?" Ryou inquired, raising one eyebrow.

"Yeah. Fucking painful," Bakura added.

"Tell me," Ryou said, scooting closer and startling Bastet out of her position between them on the couch. She indignantly scrambled onto the back of the couch as Ryou ran his fingers over Bakura's temples again.

"Are you promising me sexual favours if I tell you a story?" Bakura deadpanned.

Ryou squeaked and elbowed Bakura hard in the ribs. "_No!_ Dammit! What's with _you_ lately?"

"Maybe I just like coffee," Bakura replied solemnly. "Ow! _Ow!_ Hey! Ow! Don't kill me! Ack! Jesus, yadonushi, you're fucking violent when you get angry! Ack! _Hey!_ All right, all right, I'll tell you! Oww! Ack, Bastet, no, _bad claws! Bad claws!_"

[-]

"You want me to _what?"_

I was sitting on Darien's desk, swinging my feet and toying idly with my necklaces. Unlike Zane, I was dressed pretty because it made Darien look richer. Dressed was, of course, a relative term.

"I want you to destroy these three cities," Darien said, pulling out a map and marking them with ink circles.

I squinted at the map. Talking in Darien's language was fine and dandy, but _reading_ it was completely another matter. "What're they called?"

The slap knocked me back a good two feet. "If you can't read it, then just _guess_," Darien growled.

I wiped the blood off the edge of my mouth – Darien's slaps held a lot of force, as well as plenty of extra pain from the rings he wore – and scowled at the map again. "Can I take it with me?"

"Memorise it," Darien ordered. "And be back before tomorrow morning."

"How _far_ are these places?" I demanded. "There's no cities anywhere nearby."

Darien put one hand under my chin. "My dear little spirit-whore, _use your imagination._" He tugged on the Ring hard enough to jerk my head foreward, then reached into one pocket. "Another trinket for you," he added, making some sort of facial expression that was aiming for a smile but landed in the general region of a leer and tossing a heavy cuff inlaid with dark jewels at my face.

I blinked, snatched it out of the air, and stared at it. "What is it?"

"Give me your left foot," Darien said, not even waiting for me to comply. He grabbed the cuff, locked it around my ankle, then trailed one hand up my leg. "Do you like it, spirit mine?"

"I've got a name," I spat.

"And I really could care less," Darien replied. "Now hadn't you better be off?"

"Hmph." I slid off the desk, glaring at him. "What if I don't come back?"

Darien smiled for real this time. "You'll be back." He turned and went to the door, opening it. "Ba-ku-ra."

I _would_ be back.

I snatched up the map and glared at it, the demon-summons running through my head. "Doma," I whispered, keeping the general locations fixed in my mind. No towns had seemed to be around the cities, so I had little chance of miscalculation. I turned and strode out onto the balcony, holding out one hand. _"Doma!"_

Strange dark tickle at the back of my mind and the creature was there, floating in a murky haze that curled around my feet. I walked over and grabbed its arms, drawing its attention. "I know your name. _Know me_," I hissed. "Take me to the city on that horizon," I said, pointing to the farthest of the targets. "I'm going to turn it to _ashes_."

Everything went dark and swirled.

And so I found myself smiling up at the guards. I didn't feel like blasting the city from the outside; I planned to find a nice high spot on the inside and tear it to shreds from there. Which meant I had to get in.

Being as I was wearing copious amounts of jewels and not a lot else, it really didn't take too much. While the guards were busy ogling me, I was busy summoning Hane-Hane. They were still staring when their heads rolled across the ground towards me.

Rather macabre, actually.

I left Doma at the gates to feast on the bodies and scaled the wall, looking for the nearest high spot. The cathedral looked promising, so I jumped to the nearest roof and started going from there, building the spell in my mind as I went. I'd never used it before, but I'd seen the aftermath of it, heard the tales. Had stolen the sacred scripts and gotten someone to read it to me over and over until I knew it.

The air was turning thick and dark around me, but no one seemed to notice. It served as much more effective camouflage in the twilight than my appearance did, that was certain.

I grinned down at the city, almost smothered by the darkness. "_World Suppression!"_

My world exploded in fire.

It was like being eaten alive, my skin being shredded from my shattering bones. I screamed, and screamed again, and kept screaming until it all went dark.

[-]

"Darien was mad at me for a long time," Bakura said softly. "He hit me around a lot for being so stupid. But I'd done as he asked. I destroyed all three cities in one hit. I destroyed a complete ring around his castle somehow. Everything just went up in fire, melted into the ground, and was...gone." Bakura traced Bastet's spine idly, ruffling the fur up on the kitten's back. "It was like Kuru Eruna. The wreckage, I mean. I went to look, and...I couldn't go back. I couldn't move at all. I could only...stare." He smiled faintly. "Darien had to go knock me out and take me back himself."

"Why did you do it?" Ryou asked quietly.

"Why did I destroy the cities?" Bakura clarified.

"Not just that," Ryou said softly. "Why did you do...everything for him?"

"Whore myself, you mean?" Bakura smiled mirthlessly. "Turn myself into a faceless shell with pretty jewels and barely any clothes who draped myself seductively over inanimate objects or Darien's lap or chained myself to his throne and killed on his command?"

"You could have fought," Ryou whispered. "You fought everyone else."

"Ah, but I didn't," Bakura said just as quietly. "I didn't know how to fight, or what to fight. Zane said he loved me, but I didn't know. Aya said she loved me, but I didn't know. Micky said he loved me, but I didn't know about him either. Darien said I was his tool, his slave, his slut. I think...he was the first one I thought was completely honest to me in everything."

"What did you look like?" Ryou asked without thinking.

Bakura, oddly enough, didn't start teasing Ryou. "My hair grew the most with him," he said thoughtfully. "He put jewels in my hair, and basically dressed me in jewellery."

"Did you wear _any_ clothes?" Ryou wondered.

"A lot of the time? No," Bakura said simply. "But sometimes."

"Dare I ask what they looked like?" Ryou inquired after a pause.

Bakura grinned. "Why?"

"...I'm curious?"

Bakura sat up straight, still smirking, and waved his fingers in a summoning gesture. When Ryou moved closer, he leaned over, draped both arms across the other boy's shoulders, and whispered something in his ear. Bastet made an affronted noise and scrambled from the couch.

Seconds later, Bakura having finished describing...what he was describing, Ryou made a funny squeaky noise, turned brilliant magenta, and stared at Bakura for a very long moment. "You're fucking kidding."

Bakura looked amused. "I'm not."

"You really _were_ a whore," Ryou blurted out, then clapped one hand over his mouth. "Omigod, I'm sorry! Sorry!" he gasped through his fingers.

Bakura reached over and quietly took Ryou's fingers in his burning hot ones. "Yes, I really _was_ a whore, for four whole years. You see?"

"...you're giving me squicky mental images, yami."

"Mmm. I was always submissive, you know. Just for clarification."

Ryou 'eep'ed and blushed. "Why did you tell me that?"

"Yadonushi, I've fucked some of the most horrible, craziest people in the known world, to put it lightly. Or at least _my_ known world. I don't _have_ delicate sensibilities any more," Bakura said impatiently.

"I do!" Ryou complained.

"Really now," Bakura said speculatively. Then he flopped back onto the couch and covered his eyes again. "Really now," he repeated. "You're right."

"It doesn't mean I don't want you to tell me everything," Ryou said quickly. "I do. I want to know everything about you. _Everything._ It's just...I'd never really, you know, thought about you...you know..."

A very strange smile crept across Bakura's face. "Really?"

"Really."

"Really?"

"Really!"

"Are you _really_ sure about that one?"

"...yami, what are you implying?"

"Nothing," Bakura said innocently. "Nothing at all."

"I think you're still feverish," Ryou said severely, putting one hand to Bakura's forehead.

"So you're _sure_," Bakura continued in a tone of complete disbelief.

"Yes, yami. I'm sure I've never...um. Yeah."

"Do you plan to in the near future, now that you know all this?"

"Oh for god's sake!" Ryou burst out. "I'm not planning to throw you down and ravish you just because everyone else has done it!"

Bakura removed his hand from his eyes and took Ryou's fingers from his forehead. "That's...not really what I was asking."

"Was it a part of it?" Ryou demanded waspishly. "Yami. I'm not one of your sex-crazed stalkers from the past. I'm _me._ I've never even really...made out."

"Aren't you innocent," Bakura replied, sounding deeply amused. "Would you like that to change?"

Sigh. "All right, listen. I. Am. Me. You don't have to fucking _do_ anything...you know." Ryou looked thoroughly embarrassed. "Really, you don't. I'm not...I don't...I _love_ you."

"I know," Bakura said, nodding. "You explained. No one else ever explained."

"I'm not just anyone else. I'm me," Ryou insisted. "I'm yours."

Bakura smiled in a truly predatory fashion. "Mine," he said quietly, pulling Ryou closer and wrapping his legs around the other boy's waist.

"Meep! Yami..."

"You said you'd never made out seriously," Bakura breathed in his ear. "I asked you once. Want that to change?"

"I don't know how!" Ryou squeaked.

Bakura grinned against his neck. "I do."

Ryou stared down into dark red, half-open eyes, hands braced against the other's shoulders. "I love you," he repeated.

"Mine," Bakura agreed, his fingers sliding up Ryou's face. "Mine..."

"Yours..."

* * *

Fluffy: [cough] Yes. The present-day bits are gaining something of a plot. Or, well, progressing noticeably in the plot. [twiddles thumbs and waits for the Internet to turn back on]

**Bakuras-Hell:** XD Oh good.

**Higashikaze:** Kittens are awesome, yes?

**tamashiipurizuma:** Here you go!

**QueenOfGames:** Is _that_ where it was from? We just remembered it and threw it in there. Ehheh,

**Kerei Kitsune:** As of now, there's four more chapters.

**Liviania:** Can't sleep clowns will eat me is a pretty decent darkness, now that I think about it.

**viva rose:** Thanks! [blush]

**DreamingChild:** I might get kinda sued though. [sweatdrop] Could try it with my original stuff though...[plots]

**Yami hitokiri:** Hiya! WHERE DO YOU GET THE BAKURA QUOTES? [gnaws on ze quote] Yanno, never thought about it in that light, I didn't. Oh. Bad pun. [hits self with smacky fan]

Duel: There. Internet power. Review?


	4. Warai

**(disclaimer)** not ours. we promise.

* * *

**::warai::**

"But you're just a girl!"

I waited. She got this a lot, when people came to beg her for favors.

"How can a girl help me?" The man folded his arms and looked Aya slowly over. "Oh, a thousand pardons. Are you here to...serve...?"

Now _that_ was a new one. Usually they just muttered themselves into silence until Aya spoke.

"Shut the fuck up," I said, watching her fists clench out of the corner of my eyes.

"Oh!" The man swiveled to me. "Are...is she...yours?"

Aya's hand shot out and caught my hair, pulling my head back. "_He_ is _Ours_," she said, her words hissing from her lips. "You came for Our boon. _Speak_."

"I, ah, well, there's a lady...at my home, and...well...I should like her attentions..."

My eyes rolled so far I could practically look at the inside of my head. ::Gods. I could throw him to the ends of the earth. _Please_ let me throw him to the ends of the earth. _What_ a fucking idiot...::

"Pet," Aya said out loud, her fingers tightening in my hair and making my eyes water. "We will take care of this..._annoyance_...Ourselves."

I glanced over at her. ::No throwing to the ends of the earth?::

Aya released my hair violently enough to snap my head forwards, her other hand rising to the beads hung around her neck. "Stay. Here."

"Yeah, yeah," I agreed, draping myself over her throne and summoning up a handful of fire as soon as she vacated the seat. Her left hand started glowing white, then began rapidly heading for red.

"But you're a girl! You can't do this to me! I _demand_ to see the ruler! You can't do this! You can't _yeaaaagh!"_

I whipped my fire-holding hand down, creating an impromptu shield to block the flying blood and body parts that went with the particular spell Aya was so fond of using.

"You keep that up, you're going to spend all the treasury money buying new clothes."

Aya stalked over. "I think I'm going to pioneer a new look. Bloodstained." She spat her hair out of her face angrily. "I need a public appearance. That's the fifth one this week."

"First one to think you were a convenience whore to keep them company while they waited," I noted, transferring the fire to the other hand. "That's probably worth going out and inflicting your wrath on the populace."

Aya started pacing. "I gave them homes. I gave them safety and food and work. I took my city back from those who stole it, and gave my people their mage-ruler again. And yet I still cannot satisfy them!"

"Aya. You've been ruler for less than a year." _And two years yet to go..._ "They're not used to you yet."

"Hn." Aya stormed out onto the balcony that overlooked the city. "Give that over," she added, beckoning to my fire. It whirred from my fingers to between her hands, then up into the sky.

"What the fu – HOLY SHIT!"

I dove for cover just as the sky exploded in flame.

"People of Alexandria1, _hear me!"_

So much screaming...

"_I am your queen!"_

Sky on fire and everyone screaming...crying...

So much like home...

I curled up under her desk, threw my arms over my head, and screamed myself hoarse.

"_Yami_!"

Bakura blinked, then kept screaming.

"Yami, shut _up!" _Ryou clapped one hand over Bakura's mouth and tensed for the expected bite down on his hand. "Not the fangs! _No fangs!"_

"Mrr?" Bakura blinked, then spat blood out. "Shit!"

"You bite more than Bastet," Ryou complained, jerking his hand away. "What was all that abo – erk!"

There was a pause.

"Yami?"

"Mrr?"

"The affection is nice, but I need to breathe about once a minute. Just letting you know now. That, and my ribs have already been broken twice. I really don't need to crack them a third time."

"Are you telling me to let go?"

"Mmmmaaaaybe."

"How badly are you bleeding?"

"I've had worse. I think you broke some bones in my hand, you hyena, you. Do I just freaking taste _that good?"_

"Someone's cranky."

"No, really?"

"Okay, fine, I'm letting go." Bakura sat up and sighed, pulling his knees up and resting his chin on them. "What is it?"

"Third night in a row you've woken up screaming," Ryou said shortly. "And not a word out of you on why."

"I wake up screaming all the time," Bakura said dismissively.

"And this should reassure me why?"

"...erm."

"My point exactly."

Bakura sighed. "I'm fine."

"Whenever you go out of your way to say that, I immediately get worried." Ryou raised one eyebrow. "I'm going to go try and stop this bleeding now."

Bakura stared at him until he left the room, then flopped back onto the bed. Flicking his wrist sideways, he managed to summon up yet another handful of fire. "I don't mind waking up screaming...because sometimes I'm home before then..." Another flick and the fire went out. "And sometimes it's just another nightmare." Flick and the fire comes back. "Sometimes I think I've woken up and you've died. It's not me who killed you, though." Flick. "I stopped having those dreams a while ago. But now it's one of _them_. They hate you..." Flick. "Or, at least, I think they do."

Flick.

Bakura stared into darkness with blaze-blinded eyes. "And I can't kill someone who I've already killed...even if they're still after you."

"I don't have time for this."

Snort. "Th' freak says he doesn't have _time_ for this." A hand grabbed Ryou's hair and pulled. "Masamo said you were the devil incarnate when attacked." He pulled Ryou's head back even farther and whispered into his face, "I know how _weak_ you really are..."

"I. Don't. Have. Time. For. This," Ryou bit out, eyes narrowing. _Never should've let yami go after Masamo...should've just ignored it..._ "Let me go."

"I want to see this 'devil incarnate'." He smiled. "Or are you just too afraid to hurt someone who's actually bigger than you are?"

"All the places I've lived, people end up in comas once they get to know me too well," Ryou said softly. "People die if they get too close."

"Oh, sure." Sneer. "Like your freaky friends aren't alive and in one piece."

Sigh. "Just leave me alone. It's not worth it."

"Sure it's not." He released Ryou and stepped back, arms akimbo. "Come get me. First hit's on you."

Ryou sighed again. "Fine." His hair fell forwards to shadow his eyes as one hand palmed a card out of his pocket.

One step forwards.

Two.

Three.

Reaching up, Ryou said softly, "Broken Mirror," and gently flicked the taller boy on the forehead.

There was a soft gasp from behind him as the boy crumpled to the ground. "What did you just _do?_"

Ryou twisted around to behold Yuugi. "He wanted me to go postal on him. He wanted Bakura to fight him. I don't have time for this."

"I...I can understand not wanting Bakura to...to...but what did you _do?_"

"I'll wake him up in a while," Ryou said, his eyes devoid of emotion. "Give him a couple weeks. He's not harmed."

"But...but...where _is_ he? Your yami?"

"Gone," said Ryou.

"Gone? Wh-wh-he's loose?"

"He stopped sleeping," Ryou said bleakly. "Spends all his time obsessing over your yami's father...about Egypt...about how they're going to kill me..."

"_They_?" Yuugi demanded. "Ryou, oh jeez Ryou, is someone after either of you? Do _not_ tell me he's somehow gotten tangled up in organized crime, because I'll then start laughing hysterically."

Ryou shook his head slightly, laughing. "Yuugi...do you know how lucky you are?"

"...er?"

"You see, there's a tiny little catch that goes with these," Ryou said, tugging at the Ring. "And everyone but you has to deal with it."

"Why? What's the catch?"

"Everyone but you, because your darker half is the pharaoh. A god. The other gods can't punish him like they can...us." Ryou laughed again, painfully. "For all the others, they have to live and die over...and over...and over...until they find _us._" Ryou tapped his chest. "He _died_ six times. Killed six people who were potential hosts..._not_ under his free will, for once. I'd tell you the story, but it's long and it's pretty horrible. But he's getting sicker and sicker ever since seven years were up, and _I don't know what to do!"_ He gazed over at the boy on the ground. "I can't force him out to fight my battles for me." Softer, "I can't..."

"You don't want me to tell yami, do you?" Yuugi asked softly.

"He hates him." Ryou shuddered. "I can feel the residual hate between them. Can't you?"

Yuugi nodded slowly. "The defacing..."

"The murdering..."

"He's not forgiving that any time soon," Yuugi said waspishly.

Ryou put his hand up. "Hey, I think we win. Kuru Eruna didn't even get buried in the first place."

Yuugi smiled wryly. "What are you going to do?"

"I..." Pass one hand over murky green eyes. "Heh...I'm just going to laugh..."

Whu-BANG.

Ryou jumped.

"What the _hell is this?_"

"...a newspaper? A newspaper impaled on a knife and flung into the wall?" Ryou clarified.

Bakura glared for a full minute before stabbing at a few small lines of text in the police report column. "Some boy from _your school_ was inexplicably found in a _coma!_"

"...and?"

"_I_ didn't do it, the blonde crazies didn't do it, the _world_ would have heard if the pharaoh had gotten angry at someone, so that leaves _you."_ Bakura folded his arms and looked expectantly at Ryou. "Especially since _you_ seem to leave a trail of comas wherever you go."

Ryou grabbed the knife and yanked it out of the wall. "That is _all_ your fault!" The newspaper by then had slipped to the ground. "_You_ got your crazy amusement from that!"

"Looks like you're picking up my bad habits." Bakura crossed the room in three strides and grabbed Ryou by the collar. "Who hurt you bad enough that you'd put them out without even calling _me?"_

"Masamo's friend, Kawahara," Ryou said, the words spilling from his mouth. "Masamo told him...about you. Only he thought it was me. And he wanted to see it. So he called me out and gave me the first shot to do my worst. I didn't want to do anything. He made me. So I put him out." Ryou sighed. "I'll wake him up in a week or so. I'd better mark it on the calendar."

Bakura watched him narrowly as the slighter boy shook him off, crossed the room, counted out ten days with a muttered "for good measure", scrawled a quick note, and then stalked back to the newspaper. "Why do you keep staring at me?"

A mute stare was his only answer.

"You..." Ryou reached out tentatively and touched Bakura's arm. "I didn't ignore you because I didn't want you to...I wanted to...leave you alone for as long as you wanted..."

"..."

"...please say something."

Bakura abruptly reached up and grabbed Ryou's hand on his arm, then took the other one, turning them over to see the bite marks on both palms. "You do this every night..."

"Yes," Ryou answered.

"It's the only way to stop me panicking...to get yourself hurt," Bakura continued.

"Yes."

"Why do you even bother?"

Ryou slipped his hands from Bakura's, looked at the other boy for a long moment, then grabbed him and kissed him hard. His hands slid quickly over Bakura's clothing and tangled in his hair, ripping the bite marks on his hands open.

Bakura froze for a minute, then relaxed, pulling Ryou even closer. "Why do you even bother?" he repeated, breaking away.

"I love you," Ryou said quickly. Kiss. "I love you." Kiss. "I love – "

::Multitask,:: Bakura ordered, sliding both hands behind Ryou's head.

Ryou laughed in their minds.

::You want me to _what?::_

Darien smiled. /Simple. You will be my slave, my whore, my pet. I make no bones about this. You can't run away, now, can you?/

I gaped. ::What...of course I can...I'm the best at...you have no idea how many escapes I've made!::

/I can look it up,/ Darien said carelessly. /You're from a Greek colony. You were a serious troublemaker. There will be information on you./

::And yet you still think I won't leave you,:: I spat.

/Why should you?/ Darien asked. /According to your cute little story, you've got to come back to kill me anyway./

::You don't believe me, do you?::

/Old religion and hallucinations from a homicidal thief mean nothing to me,/ Darien said carelessly.

::You just want my body,:: I said, awed.

/Your body, your abilities, your mind,/ Darien corrected. /You personally...I know you not, and therefore I care not./

I blinked stupidly. I'd seen this behavior before, all over Kemet. And yet, I just couldn't get my _mind_ around it.

/If you're going to be my whore, you won't need clothing,/ Darien added impatiently. /If you're going to be my emissary, you'd better learn to read, write, and speak like a normal person. Your mind is already warped enough. You'll kill on command, little spirit. You've nothing better to do and no scruples to tell you no./

::But I...I only...when I...::

/I'm not _assuming_ you're a cruel and heartless monster,/ Darien snarled. /I'm saying that you'd better get used to that description, because it's going to be your life! What, were you expecting this to be on _your_ terms?/ He laughed aloud. /You've already had a full life, spirit-whore. Now _I_ get to live _mine_./

"You are _so_ cheating!"

"No, I'm not!" Bakura looked mildly indignant.

Giggle. "You keep sending your drinks to the Shadow Realm instead of drinking them!"

A disdainful look. "Oh, come on, we're drinking cheap wine coolers. Take pity on my taste buds, dammit!"

"Ohhh no. No fair. Absolutely not." Ryou glared.

"Please. How're you gonna make me drink this shit? Why couldn't we get something _worth_ using in a drinking game?"

"It's this or 'tousan's lite beer from the party eight months ago." They both looked furtively at the refrigerator, as though the aforementioned drink would come leaping out of the box and attack them.

Well, you never know...

"I could've stolen something good."

"Pfft. Then you'd just drink it."

"Uh huh!" Bakura nodded vigorously. "That's the point!"

"Hey, he squeaked again! Take a drink."

"Make me."

Ryou grinned, took a drink, then whipped around and kissed Bakura deeply. "Gotcha."

"I vote we change the rules of this game," Bakura said cheerily. "We replace taking a drink with that, and then keep working our way up."

"Yamiiii!" Ryou wailed.

"This was your idea," Bakura pointed out.

"No...you wanted to get thoroughly drunk, and I know the InuYasha drinking game. Therefore, we combined cheap wine coolers with...ah...this classic television...and here we are. Slightly tipsy if anything. Damn wine coolers," Ryou said, glowering at the three empty bottles.

"Are you suuuuuuure I can't just go get something worth drinking?" Bakura asked.

"Yes. I'm comfortable," Ryou retorted. "Therefore, you stay put."

"Hmm. A downside of being completely entwined," Bakura said meditatively. "I need a drink. A real one."

"You wanna chance the beer? 'Cause I can summon up the Earl of Demise to get it," Ryou offered.

"Mmm...nah." Bakura shrugged and quietly rearranged Ryou on his lap. "I don't have that much of a death wish. I just wanna get trashed."

"And you really want a hangover, because you just loooooove those," Ryou added mischievously.

"Nah, I just get off on you playing nurse," Bakura retorted.

Ryou tilted his head back and glared up at Bakura. "I feel oh so offended."

"Can I kiss you?" Bakura asked abruptly.

"...wha?"

"Can I kiss you?"

"Sure, why not?" Ryou replied agreeably.

"Not just five minutes of making out," Bakura clarified, looking vaguely awkward.

"...er, okay...?" Ryou shrugged. "No idea what you're on about, but hey, I'm game. You get me drunk purposely for this?"

"No," Bakura said simply. "This is a product of _me_ being mildly inebriated."

"And you wouldn't offer if you were sober?" Ryou inquired.

"I'd be too scared," Bakura said cheerily.

"Of _me?"_ Ryou looked as though he'd just witnessed Seto Kaiba running shrieking in terror from a ladybug. "What the hell's in this stuff?" he demanded, examining the label critically for any lurking fine print.

"Exactly what I'm wondering," Bakura said, raising one eyebrow. "I'm acting a lot more drunk than I am."

"So about that kiss-and-see-what-happens thing," Ryou said. "I'm all for it."

"Really?"

"Promise," Ryou said with a grin. "C'mere."

"Deal!"

* * *

**Manda Podima:** Maybe someday I will do fanarts...but until then, Darien stays that lucky. Damn him.

**Higashikaze:** Eheh. That was my idea when I started it too. Ooops.

**Liviania:** But the imagination is your FRIEND. And...um...shadow realm clean kitty litterbox?

**Bakuras-Hell:** In retrospect, I should've known that announcement would've had this effect.

**Sailor Comet:** Well, consider their ages...well, Ryou's age...and Ryou's...Ryou-ness...and Bakura running around being STABBY THINGS kinda...made him too busy...and I suck at backstory.

**QueenOfGames:** He's not sick, just...not well, either. Does that make any sense?

**Fire of the Angel:** :blush: thank you!

**viva rose:** I have taken SO sodding long...and I wrote this long before it got updated. I am a bad, bad person.

**Kerei Kitsune:** Yepyep!

**Terra:** Someone else understands! I swear this one is happier! Happy! I feel...happy....!

**Hotoke-sama:** But...but this way, no one is offended really, since it's their imagination, and some people is like XXX NC-17 RAWR and some people is like g. (and my grammar sucks tonight)

**DreamingChild:** I finish my doujinshi of One Hundred first though.

**SweetMisery:** :watches him go:

**Yami hitokiri:** About time, yeah? Oooh, I have screencaps from that episode. It's sexy. :nod-nod:

**Shinnyu Kudzu:** Ah, coffee, how I love thee...let me count the ways.

**Inverse-chan:** :broods: XD Glad you like.

* * *

**please keep up the lovely reviews... **


	5. Tsumi

You have no idea how much I get the following question...

they ain't mine.

* * *

**::tsumi::**

"Hey, are you two twins?"

Ryou and Bakura glanced at each other, then back at the young woman looking them over.

/What do we tell her?/

::Why should we tell her anything?::

/Because it's not nice to not answer./

::It's not a nice question!::

/Yeah, you have a point./

"Are you? I see you two together everywhere," the girl added. "But my sister says you're an only child," she added.

::Now how the _hell_ does her sister know that?::

/Shut up, yami./ "How does your sister know that?"

"She's in the same class as you," the woman said impatiently. "And she wants to know."

"He's not my twin," Ryou deadpanned. "He's a parasitic creature who lives in my mind and feeds off my soul."

Bakura and the woman both glared at him. "I am not!"

"Yes you are."

"Am not!"

"Are too."

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"I am _not!"_

"Shut – " Kiss, " – up!"

"Oh dear God," the woman said involuntarily.

Bakura and Ryou both raised one eyebrow in matched incredulous stares. "You _asked_."

"I...I didn't expect...I wanted a yes or no answer!"

"The answer is no, just like it was five minutes ago. And this shop probably serves all the crazies and fetishists within a hundred miles," Bakura pointed out. "That, and you're definitely smoking something hallucinogenic, woman. I'm seeing three of you, and that's just from the fumes."

/You're not, are you?/

::She's really going to have issues with what she saw today,:: Bakura said evilly. ::And she's never going to smoke menthols again.::

/Aww. You're such a humanitarian./

::Shut up, before I throw you out the window.::

/The window's open and we're on the first floor./

::...shut up.::

"IIIIIII think we'll be going now," Ryou said, dragging his recalcitrant yami out the door.

::I wasn't done!::

/You only have god knows how much merchandise stuffed down your pants!/

::Yeah, and? I could've fit more!::

/Do I even want to know what you did to the alarm system?/

::Sure you do!::

/_Only_ if you do my calculus!/

::I can't even fucking read the problems and you want me to do them?::

/You act like my situation's any better!/

::They actually teach you stuff! They never taught me jack shit!::

/Yeah, well...they're _supposed_ to teach, but it's not working./

::Sure it's not.::

/Says the man who _sleeps_ through all of it./

::I never wake up that early.::

/That's true. Why are we still talking like this?/ Ryou inquired. It had to be a strange sight, two almost-identical boys striding side by side through a mall, grinning idiotically at each other, and both occasionally bursting out in inexplicable laughter.

::Because we _scare_ people! I like scaring people,:: Bakura said smugly.

Ryou poked him. /Idiot./

::Am not.::

/Are too!/

::We've done this already.::

/Yeah, so?/

::IIIIII think...we'll be doing something different now,:: Bakura said mockingly.

/Like what?/

::Ooh, do you _really_ want to know the answer to that one?::

/Oh God, we are _not_ robbing a convenience store at gunpoint!/

::When'd you start calling me 'God'? I mean, I know the blonde psychopath was on this kick where he wanted to be God, and the whole pharaoh thing, then you become a god and all that, but – _hey,_ no kicking me!::

Kick. /Why not? Ow! Your nails are sharp! Stop it!/

::Okay, okay,:: Bakura complained. ::How come whenever _you're_ in pain and you tell me to stop, I stop, but _you_ never do that?::

/You have a point./

::So you'll stop kicking me now?::

/Oh. Sorry./

::So how about that something different?:: Bakura inquired, leading Ryou out the door.

/Dare I ask what you mean?/

::That depends on what you want to hear!:: Bakura said cheerfully. ::We could...oh, I don't know, go back and pick up some more stuff, we could go home, we could...stop in this alley here...::

/That is _so_ goddamn unsanitary! Hey, hey, stop biting me in the same freaking place! If you _ever_ leave it alone long enough it's _so_ going to scar!/

::Then I just don't leave it. Easy, yeah?::

/Yamiiiiii!/

::It's your own damn fault for wearing a shirt. If you didn't, I'd have more options, you pillock.::

/Yami!/ Ryou wailed, then dissolved into mental giggling. /Cut that out!/

::Ah ah ah...I _so_ know when you're lying.::

/Am I lying now?/ Mocking grin.

::Damn, I love you evil...::

* * *

"You know, this is entirely your own fault." Soft laugh. "You wouldn't be here if you hadn't been so damnably curious. So eager for a good solid fight. So I suppose I should be blaming the other people you usually beat up on, and not you. All this time with Jounouchi and Honda has taught me a little about the way you'd think. I also haven't been knocked around for years or been host to someone who retaliates without picking up a few things. You just wanted a good, fair, hard fight, because you're the best of the best...but you won't stay that way without someone to keep you sharp. You don't want to fall from grace. You wanted a sparring partner...and anyone will do. You wanted to give me a test run. But you did pick the wrong person. You could've stayed with Masamo, you know. He didn't buckle because he's impossible. He got beaten because he touched _me._" Lazy smile. "And anyone who crosses me is more or less doomed to die. I'm sorry about the broken arms he got and the like, but, you know...it could be that by the time you wake up, he'd be healed. But that would be cruel. You'd lose your figure...you're going to have to work like hell to get back to where you were now anyway. So I guess this is your lesson." Sigh and start pacing. "It's nothing personal, you know. Yami...he's just possessive. And I...well, I just don't have time for these sorts of things. I mean, hell, I have to worry about saving the world and all that shit."

::Yadonushi, there's someone coming.::

/Oh. Right. I'm almost done. Thanks./

::This was supposed to only take two seconds!::

/Hush, I need to concentrate./

::Yadonu – :: Ryou blocked him out with the expert ease of practice, closed his eyes, and touched the comatose boy's forehead. "Here you are, then. I don't think you'll remember anything. Reform Mirror."

Kawahara came awake with a painful gasp.

/Time to go!/ Ryou announced, vaulting the bed and throwing himself out the window.

::I just scared the night nurse,:: Bakura chirped.

/We're _leaving!_/

::Fine, fine,:: Bakura muttered. ::Well, at least the man will never be the same.::

/What did you _do?_/ Ryou demanded, trying to refasten his grip.

::Nothing really important,:: Bakura said dismissively. ::Come on, get a move on before you fall off this wretched building.::

/Easy for you to say,/ Ryou complained as he tried to think his way through the summons. /You can do all the hands-off stuff. I'm no good at it./

::Want I should do it, then?::

/Would you?/

::Idiot, you're about to fall off.::

/Yami, you have to show me how to _waugh!_/ Ryou squeaked as he lost his grip and fell.

::Teleportation! Hey, thanks for _warning_ me,:: Bakura snapped as they both dropped through the swirling bright hole. "Gotcha," he added in Ryou's ear as he neatly caught the falling boy. Their main room fizzled into view around them.

"Now how'd you learn how to do that?" Ryou inquired.

"One of the perks of working with partners in crime on occasion is learning how to catch but not drop items of great worth," Bakura replied with great dignity.

"I count as an item of great worth now?"

"Pfft," Bakura said teasingly. "I'm talking about that giant lump of gold you wear everywhere. That'll fetch a nice price."

"Sure you are. Like you'd sell the Ring, you daft imbecile. Be more creative," Ryou ordered. "And put me down."

Bakura completely ignored this last request and meditatively flopped onto the couch. "Well...I suppose I could get a decent price for you," he said after a moment. "I mean, there's got to be some underground ring who'll take you off my hands."

"You're waaaaay too narcissistic to sell me," Ryou pointed out.

"I can't say anything right!" Bakura complained.

"That's because you're lying through your teeth," Ryou retorted. "You still haven't put me down."

"And I have _no_ intention of doing so," Bakura declared.

"What do you know about slave rings, anyway?" Ryou demanded.

"As for the local ones, I'm making it up as I go along," Bakura explained. "The real ones, now, that should be obvious."

Ryou rolled his eyes. "It _is_ obvious. Was this before or after you carked it the first time?"

"Mmm...heard of them before. Dodged them like all hell. Nearly got caught quite a bit. Died. Nearly got sold off again by Micky's family."

"Oh, hey, you never told me that one," Ryou said, squirming around to stare at Bakura accusingly.

"Enh, it didn't take them long to get over their idea," Bakura said dismissively. "I think it helped that I killed every slave trader who came in to examine me."

"Aw, come on, detail." Ryou pleaded.

"It's boring," Bakura replied.

"Detail."

"There's a lot of other things to do."

"..." Ryou jumped up, darted out of the room, and returned with Bastet. "Accusingly cute kitty eyes of DOOM!"

"Mrr," added Bastet.

Bakura winced. "I feel my soul withering painfully. You're going to kill me and die a virgin." He then took the advantage of Ryou spluttering himself into silence to drag him back into his former position. "And no more using Bastet as a weapon!"

"Claws of DOOM!"

"Waugh! No claws! _Bad claws!"_

* * *

"He claims he's nineteen, that he's a...a _tomb robber_ from over five hundred years ago, and that he has mystical powers," the woman said skeptically.

The slave trader looked vaguely interested. "Yes, well, dementia really doesn't matter in some cases. Ever seen any of these mystical powers?"

"He vanished once," the woman said after a pause.

Everyone in the room looked at me. I examined my nails. "I came back," I snapped. "And I'm tempted to vanish again."

"Please do," said the slave trader. "Not to chase off merchandise, but...OH MY — "

That was roughly as far as I heard before I landed hard in my soul room again. And became really tempted to not come back out. But well, what the hell, might as well show off for the people who seemed to be holding me captive.

I plopped back into existence next to Micky, stepped away from him nonchalantly, and held my arms out. "Well?"

"Do it again," the slave trader ordered.

I glared. "Hell no."

"This must be some kind of trickery," the slave trader complained.

One line ran through my mind. _Shemuh._ Fire grew from my fingers and guttered in the stuffy air. "Convinced now? Or do I summon monsters?"

"What the hell?" The slave trader backed up more and more as I advanced on him.

"Oh, screw it," I said, and killed him with an angry slash of the hand. "Now will you lot fucking _listen?_" I demanded, my fire swirling up around me as I turned angrily to Micky and his strange family. "I'm not _fucking_ for sale. You sell me, and I'll just come poofing back."

"That could be advantageous," the woman said. "Would you agree to do this?"

I glared at her. "Just. Fucking. Try."

The woman drew back, looking insulted. "It's a lucrative offer – "

"Now when the hell did I become your slave?" I demanded. "That's all him," I added, pointing at Yioh. He promptly sent me a dirty look.

"Tomb robber," said another woman thoughtfully. I was pretty sure that she was Micky's mother. "You like to steal?"

I thought about it. "Can't say I really have any feelings of like or dislike," I finally said. "It's just...a thing I do. There's a lot of revenge involved, mostly. And it's not exactly nice work. But just thievery...I can do thievery. Just...no more tombs right now. I'll pass on those."

"You'll thieve for us?" the woman asked, her eyes glowing. "You swear."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine, fine, what do you want from the neighbors?"

The woman touched Yioh on the shoulder. "Dearest, take Micky and go on to bed."

"Yes'm," Yioh replied, and the two boys left. I promptly breathed a sigh of relief.

"You know, I just offed a man in front of those two. That's, what, the fifth one? They're going to need some serious counseling," I pointed out.

"They are young," said the first woman coolly. "They need to understand death anyway."

I raised one eyebrow. Maybe it was just _me_ that'd been severely messed in the head after a holocaust. Or maybe this woman was just weird. "Fine then. I'll just be on my deranged way. Give me directions and a target."

The first woman smiled and stepped forward. "Very well, displaced tomb robber..."

* * *

"Stop screaming! It's okay! You're okay. Calm down, it's all right, I swear. Oh God, please stop screaming..." Ryou whispered.

Bakura inhaled sharply. "Fire...I'm on fire...fire..."

"There is no fire here," Ryou enunciated. "You're okay."

"But are _you?_" Bakura stared at him. "Are _you_ alive?"

"...er, yes. Yes, I'm alive," Ryou stammered.

Bakura dissolved into semi-hysterical laughter. "You know, you were there. At home. And you were on fire. You were dead. It wasn't nice, you know. Not this time. Just fire, straight on in. Horrors, like. It wasn't a dream at any time...it was a complete nightmare."

"Please don't scream," Ryou said softly. "I...I can't...I can't stand it..."

Bakura's eyes had a strange and sudden flash of emptiness. "Am I hurting you?"

"...so much."

"I'm not touching you," Bakura pointed out.

"You of all people should know that means nothing."

"That's true." Bakura scrambled to sit up. "I didn't sleep three days this time, did I?"

"No, you stopped that a while ago," Ryou explained. "I think it's been closer to three hours."

"Felt like three days."

"Yami..."

"Uh oh."

"Shut up and listen to me. I, uh, I..." Ryou trailed off, made a face, then flopped facedown onto a pillow. "Damn. Never mind."

"Hey, yadonushi..." Bakura began. "Do you...what's wrong with me?"

"A very large number of things," Ryou said dryly.

"So tell me," Bakura said hopefully.

"Well...you have no remorse for killing or hurting people," Ryou began. "A lot of people have issues with that kind of stuff. People are stupid and think everyone should believe the same way."

"So I'm a murdering psychopath," Bakura summed up. "Anything else?"

"Well, a lot of people also don't understand the whole sadomasochism thing you're into," Ryou explained.

Bakura looked thoroughly put out. "Christ. Anything else?"

"You look really strange, you have a completely unidentifiable accent, you swear worse than anyone I've ever met, and you randomly pop in and out of my head at intervals," Ryou continued.

Bakura looked thoroughly ruffled. "I wake up screaming to _this?_"

"I'm saying this is why _other_ people don't like you," Ryou pointed out. "I, however, am...well, I'm considered absolutely insane when people talk about me politely."

"Hn." Bakura looked unconvinced.

Ryou sighed, then leaned over and bit the other boy's shoulder. "Stop that."

"You just bit me."

"Yes, I did."

"...that's really kind of kinky."

"Says the man who keeps biting any exposed skin on _me_ that he can reach."

"Yes, well, that's me. Immoral and all that."

Ryou determinedly lifted Bakura's chin with one finger so that the two could stare at each other. "And why am I supposed to be any different? I'm your other half, not your sodding conscience."

"I even have a conscience?"

"That's exactly my point."

"Now you're just confusing me," Bakura said severely.

"And doing an excellent job, apparently."

"Damn you! When did you become so evil?"

"You did say you liked me better that way."

Bakura burst out laughing. "So I did...of course, I don't know if I can ever 'like you better'. I mean, hell, we're already talking about readings off the charts."

"I think this is the bit where you shut up and kiss me."

"Hmm. Good-o."

"You're still talk – " /Ah. Much better./

* * *

**Manda Podima:** Un-sweet-and-innocent-ikkle!Yuugi rocks my world.

**Liviania:** I'm saving the Bailey's for later. ::grin::

**QueenOfGames:** But the imagination is so much fuuuuuun....

**Kerei Kitsune:** Thanks. ::grin::

**YamiKatie:** Awu...that's no good. Feel better?

**Bakuras-Hell:** Heh. There you go, use thy imagination of DOOM!

**DreamingChild:** This one really does feel different from Yadonushi. I mean...I knew how that one was going to end. It was pretty definite. This one...not so much. Hazy. Ner.

* * *

**please review some more. we love ya'll.**


	6. Aishi

I'm sorry it took so long. I'M SORRY! I really am. (grovels)

* * *

**(aishi)**

He was standing outside in the rain, alone and wearing a drenched shirt and jeans without shoes or a coat. It was barely two in the morning and muggily warm still, and his face was turned to the sky while he licked greedily at the rain.

He heard a window open somewhere on the street, and heard it slam shut just as quickly. If it had anything to do with seeing a ghostpale boy performing a strange self-made rain-worshipping ritual, he didn't give a damn.

Perhaps that was best.

Youth and love and life, power and madness and loss. Everything was about the past and he wasn't sure he wanted it that way. He had the here and now in all its beauty and painfulness, and what was history to intrude on that and warp it to its demands?

He ignored the answer, though he knew it all the way to the darkest corners of his mind. History was everything. History had every right.

His not to question why.

He threw his head back and screamed to the pouring sky.

* * *

The teacher had only been droning on about pyramids for fifteen minutes, and already Bakura Ryou was ready to pull a slip-sliding personality switch and start murdering things. Instead, he was forced to content himself to ticking off everything in the textbook that was wrong and to keeping track of how many times he and Yuugi twitched simultaneously. It was sort of fun.

"...and this pharaoh bore a striking resemblance to someone in this class, hmm?" The teacher's eye fixed on Yuugi as the class tittered. Ryou himself had to fight back a laugh as Yuugi developed a spontaneous eye twitch on one side of his face. He had a vague suspicion that the eye twitch had nothing to do with the class, but rather everything to do with the inside of Yuugi's mind, which made it all the more amusing.

Ryou hadn't been able to find his other half that day. This was slightly alarming, but it had happened before. He didn't plan to get really alarmed and start calling the morgues until at least the next morning.

When Ryou called the morgues, it was never for anyone of his own description. It was to see if anyone had come in either with stab wounds, horribly mauled by an unknown animal, or simply looking as though they'd had their soul ripped away. The morgue attendants were really starting to wonder just what kind of deranged fetishist it was that called them with a schoolboy's voice about once every two months or so. Or they would, if Ryou didn't remember to quietly steal down afterwards and take their memories away with him each time.

A new slide flashed up on the board with a soft click. "And here is where archaeologists discovered what they believe to be a disused mummification room. It wasn't labeled disused for the reasons you'd expect, however." There was a pause while the class blinked itself out of its stupor and looked mildly inquisitive. "It seems that in this room, seven items considered to be of great power were forged. All seven items have been deemed recovered and in good hands..."

Ryou ignored the teacher's long and complicated explanation of the financial complexities of a dig and looked sideways at Yuugi. Yuugi glanced back, then down at the Puzzle with an expression that thoroughly cursed the bulky shape which rendered it very unsuitable for wearing under a shirt. Ryou quietly ran one finger around the leather on his neck, pushing it further under his collar. The Ring was hidden, but Ryou was starting to have his suspicions about just who had provided the slides. The pictures looked incredibly like ones he himself had been forced to take, cursing the horrible lighting and inability to use flash the entire time. The sketch artist had been two weeks late, he'd remembered, and he'd stayed on until the man had finally showed. After that, he'd headed back to Japan, and all the complications that had ensued upon the receipt of one very well insured package.

"In this urn, some human remains were later found, dated to approximately the same time as the making of those seven items. Obviously this room had not been long disused..." It was another grainy photo, followed by a detailed sketch. Neither of them were things Ryou had remembered taking or drawing, but he remembered the urn.

He found that when he blinked, he remembered it in another context as well, feeling the souls shriek out from it and up through the floor when he walked through the palace doors. A devil-may-care smile and all the demons of hell urging him on was how he'd felt. Like Am'mit was yawning behind him.

But it hadn't been him feeling it.

His vision went painfully blurry, his eyes tearing up as he gasped for air. Even after so many years, one could feel the malevolent pain rising from the pictures, if one knew what to look for. He quietly stood, nearly fell over his books, and felt his way out the door without an explanation. The Ring was twisted in his collar and was choking him, so he ripped the fabric away and let the metal and leather hang free over his skin. It didn't occur to him that he was moving quickly, but by the time his teacher had looked out the door after him, he was gone.

He collapsed under the stairs, hands pressed over his face and tears streaming through his fingers. "Not me...not me not me not me..."

"Not you?" Yuugi found him there under the stairs some minutes later. He had left one body there to sit and look bored in a cramped classroom several hallways away while he himself pursued his friend. "Ryou, what is it?"

Ryou swiped at his eyes and looked up with a laugh. "I'm forgetting which one I am. It happens, you know, when you're the right one. You start to melt around the edges a little. I could have told him that, when he was so worried. I was already getting mixed up by then. It's only gotten worse now, though. I was there, you know. I took those pictures. The teacher will tell you it's through the generosity of my father that we have them, but I took the pictures. It was right before I came here and got the Ring seven years ago. And I was there again, however many thousands of years ago that it was. And I don't know which one is the real memory."

"Probably both," Yuugi said softly. "I think I know what you mean. I haven't had this as long as you have, though," he added, touching the Puzzle. "You know, is it me, or is our teacher looking very oddly at this thing?"

Ryou's eyes went distant. "I hate it when people give us that look," he said, and Yuugi instantly realized that the 'us' did not mean 'you and me'. "Better watch yourself."

Yuugi twiddled with the Puzzle vaguely. "You know, the last time I saw that look, I think the man who made it was eaten by Am'mit. Or maybe he turned into a zombie. Actually, I think both happened." At Ryou's look, he continued, "This was before you moved here."

"I'd guessed," Ryou said. "When I get that look, the headlines aren't about zombies. They're about Jack the Ripper copycats."

"Though there was one incident with rabid lemmings," Yuugi said thoughtfully. "That was the headline, anyway." He stood and offered one hand to Ryou. "This is one class I think we can skip."

The two drifted out of the building amidst quiet talk of a seashore visit, an odd jeweler, and a very angry Kuriboh.

We'll leave it to your imagination as to what kind of hell yami no Yuugi was raising in that Ancient History class.

* * *

It was in books that I found sanctuary. At least, as far as _she_ was concerned. Thanks to Darien, I was fully literate in three languages, and spoke another in my curses and my dreams. Her language was something else entirely, but I didn't much care.

I wondered if my quick absorption of Greek, Latin, and Arabic had been from living in Darien's mind, or if I was just a quick scholar. Either was likely, but I didn't dwell on it much. There were scores of books in Greek, brimming with history and myths and legends. The hexameter got to be a little tedious after a while, but the content was far better and closer to sane than I'd been in ages. I also found a handful in Arabic, one of which was called _Alf Laylah wa Laylah_.

One thousand and one nights.

It made me want to laugh and cry and scream, all at once. Forever and a night, as it were. In my own language, 'one thousand' was the same as 'all'. Everything, and then one night more.

My life felt like that sometimes.

So I read it.

It was from the book that I learned stories, from the book that I learned to tell them. From the book that I learned to weave them together and into one another, so that everything that fell from my mouth was intricate tale-lies.

I knew that she spoke no Arabic. And I started to see a way to distract her, just a little. I didn't need to sleep or breathe or eat, though I did all three for my own purposes. So one night when she found me by following my chains, she yet again begged me for a story as she had not since I had nearly killed her, that one time.

So I smiled at her, something that made her eyes flicker and her breath go oddly, and started weaving lies and truth and fables in the hated link between her mind and mine.

If she loved me so well, I could feed her insanity with my own warped and twisted mind.

We're all mad here, I told her, and she certainly believed me.

I had forgotten how wonderful it felt to destroy something, even something as trivial as the remnants of her sanity.

* * *

In a small, cramped classroom, one new teacher of Ancient History was fuming over how badly his class had gone once that Mutou Yuugi had gotten his mouth started and trying to figure out how he was going to talk two of his students into giving him their very expensive jewelry.

Wandering the hallway outside of this small, cramped classroom was a soaking wet, slender white-haired young man. He didn't have any shoes on. He didn't know what he was doing there. All he had was the idea that something was very wrong, and that it was coming from this direction.

"There has to be some rule about flamboyant jewelry that would allow me to confiscate this. Or perhaps in payment for the slides? God, I need the money. 'Recovered and in good hands', my ass. No one knows where the hell they went, but the spin story's too good and too well paid for by that deranged family. I need the money..." Bakura curiously followed the voice and found himself dripping his way into a classroom that his other half would recognize easily.

The teacher stood up quickly, eyes flicking to the Ring on Bakura's chest. "Oh! Er. Bakura-kun. Did I mention that I wanted to thank you and your father for getting those slides? I, er, hope you're all right after today. You. Er. You're here to find out what's on the test tomorrow?"

Bakura's eyes narrowed. "You want this," he announced derisively, pulling the Ring away from his chest casually. "You want it for all the money it'll bring you."

"Er," said the teacher.

Bakura laughed, and the sound echoed awkwardly in the room. "I admire thieves who know what they are. But you're not that sophisticated. You're a piece of cheap trash, and you know what makes it worse? That you're going after this." Again with the tug on the Ring. "This is mine. Bound to me body and blood and soul. I get everything from this. Madness and love and hate and knowledge and myself. I get..." Here he smiled, trying to figure out just how to phrase it. "I get the boy who must sit in your classroom, editing the textbook whenever it's wrong and wearing this under his uniform. I get _him_."

"But you are him," the teacher blurted. "Aren't you?"

Bakura shrugged, insolent and graceful. His lips pursed as he gazed at the ceiling, fingers twisting around the Ring's cord. "Sometimes the lines blur, and sometimes people get confused. Sometimes it's both at once."

"Look," the teacher said desperately. "I know that your necklace is stolen property, and I can fix it up for you. I want to help you."

Bakura's eyes narrowed. "Of course it's stolen property. It's made of the blood and bone of my family and friends and people. I took it from the dead neck of one of the pharaoh's priests for all the power it held. And it stole my soul over five thousand years, ripping me six ways apart. And the seventh time? I'm finally starting to come back together. And if you think that you can change that, you're a fool and cursed into the bargain."

"Just give the damn thing to me!" the teacher finally burst out.

Bakura's fingers went to the small of his back and removed the item held there. "Mortal man. I don't even know your name," he added with contempt. "But you have no idea what I am. And you chose the worst day in the history of the world to try and _fuck with me!_ I've seen royalty die! I've dragged them from their tombs and spat on their bones! I'm the tool of Ones you can't imagine and I've molded gods from my soul! And after my world ended, some human still wants to destroy my life. You're not even close to a god. I doubt you know what one is." The knife glimmered in the low lighting. "But I'm going to introduce you right now. Starting. With. Me."

* * *

"What is that thing you're copying?"

"It's a document of family history. I'm translating it."

I eyed the original, then the copy. "You're leaving things out and putting new things in," I said critically.

I expected a smack across the face for mistranslation, but was instead rewarded with a strange, off-kilter smile from Darien. "Lost in translation," he said simply, and went back to his work.

"You're deliberately changing history," I interpreted. "Why?"

Darien looked up at me with impatience. "I am the first to translate the history of this particular civilization. I can alter the history in a way that suits me."

"How will changing history help you?" I demanded. "It already happened."

"The victors write history," Darien said. "But I can depose those victors by erasing what they have written. Tell me, how did the lord of the lands to our east come by his property?"

"By inheritance," I said lazily. "Like you."

"And what tongue do his people speak? And by his people, I include his lawyers."

I eyed the translation. "Probably that one," I said, stabbing at it with a finger.

"According to this translation, who fell in line for the kingdom?"

I didn't even bother to look this time. "You."

Darien smiled again. I was beginning to wonder if the world was going to quietly end sometime soon. "Exactly. I shall be a king, if I play this right."

"He's not going to just hand over his kingdom to you based on a translation you wrote," I said scornfully.

"This translation will not be made in my name. It was a commission to a freelancing scholar, and it will stay that way," Darien said. "And he won't be alive to hand over his kingdom. He has no heirs, and he is unmarried. It will be kept that way."

"So you want me to knock him off," I said. "Right. When?"

Darien looked at the document. "You will take this to him in person first. He does not know you, or at least not well enough to understand what such a thing means."

I picked it up off the desk, inspected it, and put it back. "Messenger of death."

"You are more useful than a cadre of assassins," Darien said, scooping me onto his lap. I promptly elbowed him in the ribs and stalked away from his reach. "You will sit at the right hand of a king, my death-slave."

"I've been there," I said vaguely. "I much prefer the throne to any surrounding chair."

"Your time of power is over," Darien said, "and mine is only just coming to fruition. I will be as a god. I have told you this before."

I looked at him emptily. "I've seen gods die. I don't think I've ever mentioned that to you."

"Are you trying to intimidate me?" Darien asked, puffing up.

I shrugged. "Don't you have a translation to finish?"

* * *

Ryou picked up the phone and touched the speed dial number four.

The door swung open as the line clicked and connected. "Hello, Domino City Morgue."

Ryou's eyes met Bakura's, but he didn't hang up. "Could you tell me if someone's come in just now who looks like they've been done in by Jack the Ripper?"

"What? Why...yes," the mortician said, sounding startled. "This is the police?"

"Something like that," Ryou said softly, and hung up. "You have excellent timing," he said, heading for the door.

Bakura grabbed him as he passed and kissed him long and hard. Breaking away without a word, he filtered into the shadows before Ryou's eyes could focus on him.

"I'll be back in a bit," Ryou whispered to the empty house, and walked out into the pouring rain. There was blood smeared on his clothes and his mouth now, but Ryou didn't much care. He'd had worse.

It wasn't a long walk to the morgue if you knew which road to take. Ryou's preferred route usually went through the Shadow Realm.

"...and then they just hung up! God, I hate the loony factor in this job," a woman was complaining when he walked in the front door. The guard nodded sympathetically, then turned to look at him with bored curiosity.

"Good evening," Ryou said quietly, and smiled.

Five minutes later, the guard and the woman were both cheerfully unaware of any loony quotient for the day, the body of his teacher had been fed to hungry zombies in a certain badly-lit dimension, and the table had been hosed down. Ryou bit his lip thoughtfully as he scanned the room for anything else to fix, then proceeded to the phone. He scanned through the recorded list of caller ID, then deleted the lot.

It had been a while since the mortician had done so anyway.

When he went back into his house, he realized that he was still all over blood, despite the rain. Perhaps if he'd actually walked from the morgue, it would have come off, but Ryou had other things to do that night than lark about under the small lake that was being upended over his city.

"Where are you?" he asked, looking around.

Bakura said, after a long pause, "Here."

Ryou found himself yet again being grabbed and held against wet clothes that reeked of blood. "What happened?"

"You need a new Ancient History teacher," Bakura said. "Though you never needed one in the first place. I could tell you all you needed to know for that class."

"I knew that look was trouble," Ryou said into Bakura's shoulder. "I hate that look."

Bakura's eyes drifted closed. "He had forgotten the gods, so I reintroduced him. He wanted to break us apart, though he didn't understand what he would do. He was so...naïve."

"I did think that about him," Ryou said. "There won't be any repercussions." Holding Bakura back at arm's length, he looked critically at his other half. "You're soaked through and freezing. That can't be comfortable."

Bakura looked a bit bewildered, then said, "I hadn't really noticed."

"I know," Ryou said. "It's why I told you."

Bakura smiled, tired and full of quiet sin. "He tried to take you away."

"I think sometimes I forget which of us I am," Ryou replied, and this made perfect sense to the both of them.

"Everything twists into each other and you don't remember which way is out," Bakura mused. "Did I ever tell you about that?"

Ryou shook his head slowly, starting for his room. "No. Come tell me where it's warm."

Bakura drifted after him. "Give me a minute to find something else to wear," he said, and Ryou smiled lazily into the darkness.

* * *

hmm. one more chapter. if you want to know anything about any of the hosts, TELL ME NOW. the plot will be winding down. yes, there is a plot. you didn't notice?

**Kooriya Yui: **Sleep? What is this sleep you speak of?

**DreamingChild:** Couple of COMPLETELY DERANGED LOONIES.

**Cymoril Avalon:** "Yaaaaaaami! Stop laughing at the murders on TV, there's girls in the house!"

**Bakuras-Hell:** I live to serve. In many, many ways.

**Kerei Kitsune:** I'm so sorry this took so long.

**Manda Podima:** Menthols just confuse me. And I can totally imagine Bakura saying 'mrr'.

**Liviania:** Mmm. Irish crème to a whole new level.

**QueenOfGames:** Ee. I'm a little afraid now.

**Scoodoo58:** Hoodies of Magic Protection +5.

**SweetMisery:** I think they're both just raving mad.

**Esther'nEra-guardians-ofChaos: **Sorry this took so long.

**Sweetlilbee:** Weeeeell, you haven't degenerated into threats on my life over my slow, slow updating, so you're pretty unique. (grin)

* * *

**please review. you can see i'm updating faster these days. i really am. **


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